New developments:

Kremlin says decision to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus was prompted by NATO expansion toward Russia
Swedish prosecutor investigating Nord Stream pipeline blasts in September tells Reuters “the clear main scenario” is that a state sponsored group was responsible
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits Poland, updating leaders there on the war in Ukraine and meeting with Ukrainian refugees who fled after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron encouraged Chinese President Xi Jinping to use China’s relationship with Russia to help bring an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Macron told Xi as they met Thursday in Beijing that Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has harmed international stability.

“I know I can count on you to bring back Russia to reason and everyone back to the negotiating table,” Macron said.

China has proposed a multi-part peace plan for Ukraine that includes a call for upholding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, but it does not call on Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have said they will only engage in peace talks if Russia withdraws all its military, while Russia has insisted that Ukraine recognize areas that Russia has claimed to annex.

Zelenskyy in Poland

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited neighboring Poland Wednesday, giving leaders there an update on the war in Ukraine and meeting with Ukrainian refugees who fled after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said the situation for Ukrainian forces in the eastern city of Bakhmut remains difficult and that “corresponding decisions” would have to be taken if Kyiv’s troops were at risk of being surrounded by Russian forces.

Zelenskyy discussed the state of the war with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, as well as international support and cooperation for Ukraine. Zelenskyy thanked Poland for what he characterized as its historic assistance to the Kyiv government.

Duda said Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine that must be punished.

“Today we are trying to get for Ukraine … additional guarantees, security guarantees, which will strengthen Ukraine’s military potential,” the Polish president noted.

Poland has been a key ally for Ukraine. The U.N. refugee agency says there are 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees who have registered for temporary protection status in Poland.

Poland also has served as a main hub for other Ukrainian partners to send in military and humanitarian aid.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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It was an international summit of democracies, but several democratic countries in Asia and Africa were absent; some were not invited and some turned down the invitation. 

Pakistan declined to attend, giving no excuse except that Islamabad will engage Washington, a close ally, bilaterally.

The real reason for Pakistan’s absence, experts say, was not about democracy but about China. 

“This was a fairly straightforward diplomatic decision,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia institute at the Wilson Center, told VOA.

“China was not invited, and Taiwan was. Pakistan, out of deference to its Chinese ally, would not want to attend a forum where Taiwan was present,” he said.

The only nuclear-armed, majority-Muslim country in the world, Pakistan has extensive economic and political ties with the United States and China. 

In 2020, the United States was the top export country for Pakistani products — over $4.1 billion — while Pakistan imported products worth more than $12.4 billion from China, more than from any other country, according to the World Bank. 

China is the single largest creditor to Pakistan with over $31 billion in loans, while the United States has given more than $32 billion in direct support to Pakistan over the past two decades. 

It is unclear how Pakistan’s preference to skip the U.S. invitation to gain China’s approval will work out at a time when the country is facing serious economic challenges.   

Yet Pakistan’s decision was not driven purely by economic calculations, experts say. 

Fragile democracy

The U.S. summit came at a critical time for democracies around the world. The pace of democratization has slowed, while authoritarian regimes have become more effective and influential, according to Freedom House, a U.S. entity that reports on civil and political freedom globally.

“Democracy is on life support in Pakistan,” Kugelman said, adding that the country’s democratic progress made since 2008 is in peril.

For much of its existence since 1947, Pakistan has been taken over by a military dictatorship whenever the country suffered a civilian political breakdown.

Amid intensifying political brinkmanship between the incumbent coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, leader of a major opposition party, there is fresh speculation about yet another coup. 

A declaration of martial law by the Pakistani military “would be the worst possible outcome for the country,” tweeted Madiha Afzal, a fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.  

The United States has long held a policy of supporting and promoting democracy across the world, but Washington seems to be distancing itself from the intensifying political drama in Pakistan.

“The sobering reality is that the U.S. has itself contributed to Pakistan’s democratic deficit by emphasizing its relations with Pakistani military leaders. That may advance U.S. goals for Washington’s relations with Pakistan, given that the army makes the big decisions on relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t help a perpetually fragile democracy that today is gasping for breath,” said Kugelman. 

Turkey

The United States did not invite Turkey, a constitutional secular democracy and a NATO ally, to the first democracy summit held in 2021 nor to the one that took place last week. 

Often labeled as an autocrat and dictator, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is blamed for taking Turkey on an undemocratic path — criticism that Erdogan has strongly rejected. 

“Turkey is no longer a democratic state but is perhaps best described as an electoral autocracy,” Paul Levin, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University, told VOA.

Aside from concerns about its democratic backtracking, Turkey is the only NATO member country that has refused to enforce Western sanctions against Russia, particularly in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

“Ankara feels like it cannot afford to antagonize Russia, as it is dependent on energy imports and deferment of loan payments, as well as needing Russian cooperation to achieve its own objectives in Syria,” Levin said. 

By playing on both sides of the war in Ukraine, Erdogan tries to offset the economic crisis that Turkey has been facing, analysts say.

The absence of Turkey and Pakistan in the democracy summit was not conspicuous. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim democracy, Bangladesh and many others were also absent.

“Regarding why certain countries are not invited, we will not discuss internal deliberations. However, we reiterate that for the summit, we aim to be inclusive and representative of a regionally and socioeconomically diverse slate of countries. We are not seeking to define which countries are and aren’t democracies,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State told VOA in an emailed response. 

Bringing 74 democracies to a forum, despite significant differences evinced in the final declaration of this year’s summit, was officially lauded as a major achievement.

But that achievement has limits, some analysts say.

“There was a certain arbitrariness to the summit guest list that I fear takes away from the credibility of the summit itself,” Kugelman said.  
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Turkey has closed its airspace to flights to and from an airport in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq, a top Turkish official announced Wednesday, citing an alleged increase in Kurdish militant activity threatening flight safety. 

The airspace was closed Monday to flights taking off from and landing at Suleimaniyah International Airport, in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tanju Bilgic said. 

The closure was a response to an alleged increase in the activities of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in the city of Suleimaniyah, including its “infiltration” of the airport, Bilgic said in a written statement. 

Bilgic said the Turkish airspace would remain closed until July 3, when Turkish authorities would review the security situation. 

The decision comes weeks after two helicopters crashed in northern Iraq, killing Kurdish militants who were on board. The incident fueled claims that the PKK was in possession of helicopters, infuriating Turkish authorities. 

The main U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led force in northeastern Syria later said it lost nine fighters, including a commander, in the crash, which occurred during bad weather on a flight to Suleimaniyah. The nine included elite fighters who were in Iraq as part of an “exchange of expertise” in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to a group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. 

Suleimaniyah International Airport director Handren al Mufti said the airport received an email from Turkish Airlines on April 3 saying its flights that day and the next were canceled. A subsequent email extended the flight suspension until April 11, Mufti said. 

He said airport officials received no response when they asked why the action was taken. 

“I can assure everyone that we have no security issues at all, and not a single incident of security breach occurred inside the airport, but apparently there are other purposes behind their decision,” Mufti said. 

Turkish Airlines flew twice daily from Istanbul to Suleimaniyah. 

The PKK has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s and is considered a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and the European Union. Its members have established safe havens in northern Iraq and frequently come under attack by Turkey in the region. 

Turkey also considers a Syrian Kurdish militant group, which forms the backbone of the SDF, as a terrorist organization. The United States, however, distinguishes between the PKK and SDF and doesn’t consider the SDF a terrorist group. 

The helicopter crash also fed into a local rivalry between the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq. 

Officials from the Kurdish Democratic Party, which has maintained largely good relations with Turkey, alleged after the crash that the helicopters had been originally purchased by the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, which has its stronghold in Suleimaniyah, and that they had been flying without permission from the regional government. 
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China feels it has the “right to redefine the global world order,” Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei told AFP on Wednesday ahead of the opening in London of his first design-focused exhibition. 

The show at the Design Museum features hundreds of thousands of objects collected by the Chinese artist since the 1990s, from Stone Age tools to Lego bricks, and draws on his love of artifacts and traditional craftsmanship. 

The son of a poet revered by former communist leaders, Ai, 65, is perhaps China’s best-known modern artist and helped design the famous “Bird’s Nest” stadium for Beijing’s 2008 Olympics. 

But he fell out of favor after criticizing the Chinese government, was imprisoned for 81 days in 2011 and eventually left for Germany four years later. 

Among the artifacts in the new exhibition are thousands of fragments from Ai’s porcelain sculptures, which were destroyed when the bulldozers moved in to dismantle his studio in Beijing in 2018. 

In launching the show, Ai said he believed China was “not moving into a more civilized society, but [had] rather become quite brutal on anybody who has different ideas.” 

“Tension between China and the West is very natural,” added the artist, who has lived in Europe since 2015. 

“China feel they have their own power and right to redefine the global world order,” he said. “They think China can become an important factor in changing the game rules, basically designed by the West world.” 

And he said that even though Europe had been relatively peaceful for 70 years, there were many problems, including much less concern for “humanity” and threats to “freedom of speech.” 

The objects to go on display include 1,600 Stone Age tools, 10,000 Song Dynasty cannon balls retrieved from a moat, and donated Lego bricks that the artist began working with in 2014 to produce portraits of political prisoners. 

The exhibition will also feature large-scale works installed outside the exhibition gallery. 

They include a piece titled “Colored House” featuring the painted timber frame of a house that was once the home of a prosperous family during the early Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). 

Exhibition curator Justin McGuirk said the things Ai had been collecting over the years represented “a body of evidence about different histories, different cultural moments in China’s history [that]  maybe have been forgotten or not thought about enough.”  

“Ai Weiwei always makes something out of destruction and plays on the idea of construction,” he added.
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A day after celebrating Finland’s joining the trans-Atlantic security alliance, NATO members got down to work Wednesday, tackling security threats posed by both Russia and China. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Brussels.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin charged Wednesday that Western intelligence agencies have helped Ukraine carry out acts of sabotage, as he urged his officials to mount a stronger response. 

Putin spoke during a call with members of his Security Council that focused on efforts to shore up control of the four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claimed as part of its territory in September — a move that was rejected by most of the world as an illegal annexation. 

“There are reasons to believe that the capabilities of third countries, Western special services, have been involved in preparation of acts of sabotage and terror attacks,” Putin said, without elaboration and without providing any evidence. 

He noted that the four provinces have faced Ukrainian shelling and acts of sabotage aimed at scaring the local population, adding that the authorities must act “harshly and effectively to ensure control over the situation.” 

Several Moscow-appointed officials in the newly incorporated provinces have been killed and wounded in a slew of bombings and other attacks. 

Putin urged officials to strengthen efforts to fully integrate the four regions into Russia and protect local residents from Ukrainian attacks. 

“They must see and feel that all our great country stands behind them and we will do everything to protect them,” Putin said in televised remarks at the meeting. 

When Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he charged that Russia’s “special military operation” was intended to “demilitarize” Ukraine, block its potential accession to NATO and protect the country’s Russian speakers – the rhetoric Ukraine and its allies have described as a cover for an unprovoked act of aggression. 

After failing to capture Kyiv in the initial weeks of the fighting, Russia has focused its military efforts on gaining control of Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas that includes the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. 

The Russian military captured the province of Kherson and part of the province of Zaporizhzhia in the south early during the conflict but withdrew from the city of Kherson and nearby areas on the western bank of the Dnieper River in November under the brunt of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. 

Speaking during a separate Kremlin meeting where he received credentials from foreign ambassadors, including the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Lynne M. Tracy, Putin charged that Washington’s support for mass protests in Kyiv that ousted Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly president in 2014 lay at the root of the current conflict. 

“The relations between Russia and the United States, which directly impact global stability and security, are in a deep crisis,” he said. “It’s rooted in principally different approaches to shaping the modern world order.”
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Silvio Berlusconi, who has served as Italian prime minister four times, was being treated in intensive care in a cardiac unit at Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital after reportedly suffering breathing problems.

The 86-year-old billionaire media tycoon has suffered repeated bouts of ill-health in recent years and came out of the hospital just last week.

“He has been admitted to intensive care because a problem caused by an infection has not been resolved but he is speaking,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, a long-time ally of Berlusconi, told reporters in Brussels.

Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party is part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition although he does not have a role in government.

Berlusconi made his fortune through his commercial television channels and gained an international profile as owner of European soccer champions AC Milan before entering politics in 1994 when the previous political class was brought down by a corruption scandal.

His health has deteriorated, and he had heart surgery in 2016 and has also had prostate cancer. He has been repeatedly admitted to hospital over the past couple of years after contracting COVID-19 in 2020.

Italian media reports said Berlusconi was taken to hospital after complaining of breathing difficulties.

Three sources from Forza Italia said he was in intensive care, and one of them confirmed reports that he was being treated in a cardiac unit. Another of the sources said the situation was “under control.”

San Raffaele Hospital did not respond to a request for comment. A statement on Berlusconi’s condition was expected to be made on Wednesday evening.

Still provoking

Berlusconi stepped down as prime minister for the last time in 2011 as Italy came close to a Greek-style debt crisis and was weighed down by his own scandals, including his notorious “bunga bunga” parties.

He was returned to the Senate (upper house) of the Italian parliament after a general election last September.

Berlusconi has stirred controversy in recent months with his criticism of Ukraine’s President Volodymir Zelenskyy, putting him at odds with Meloni.

An Italian court acquitted Berlusconi in February over allegations of paying witnesses to lie in an underage prostitution case that has dogged the former prime minister for more than a decade.

Berlusconi was accused of bribing 24 people, mostly young, female guests at his so-called bunga bunga parties, in a previous trial where he was charged with paying for sex with a 17-year-old Moroccan nightclub dancer.

Berlusconi’s Fininvest family holding group retains control of the MediaForEurope television business, and its shares rose on Wednesday on speculation about potential mergers and acquisition activity in a post-Berlusconi era.
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International law enforcement agencies have seized a sprawling dark web marketplace popular with cybercriminals, Britain’s National Crime Agency, or NCA, said Wednesday, in a multinational crackdown dubbed ‘Operation Cookie Monster.’

A banner plastered across Genesis Market’s site late on Tuesday said domains belonging to the organization had been seized by the FBI. Logos of other European, Canadian, and Australian police organizations were also emblazoned across the site, along with that of cybersecurity firm Qintel.

“We assess that Genesis is one of the most significant access marketplaces anywhere in the world,” said Rob Jones, the NCA’s Director General of Threat Leadership.

The NCA estimated that the service hosted about 80 million credentials and digital fingerprints stolen from more than 2 million people.

It said 17 countries were involved in the operation, which was led by the FBI and Dutch National Police and had resulted in about 120 arrests, more than 200 searches and almost 100 pieces of “preventative activity”.

Qintel did not immediately return messages seeking comment and Reuters could not immediately locate contact details for Genesis Market’s administrators.

The FBI seemed eager for information about them as well, saying in its seizure notice that anyone who had been in touch with them should “Email us, we’re interested.”

Genesis was specialized in the sale of digital products, especially “browser fingerprints” harvested from computers infected with malicious software, said Louise Ferrett, an analyst at British cybersecurity firm Searchlight Cyber.

Because those fingerprints often include credentials, cookies, internet protocol addresses and other browser or operating system details, they can be used by criminals to bypass anti-fraud solutions such as multi-factor authentication or device fingerprinting, she said.

The site had been active since 2018.

The NCA said Genesis had operated by selling credentials from as little as $0.7 to hundreds of dollars depending on the stolen data available.

“To get up and running on this you just have to know of the site, potentially be able to get yourself an invite which given the volume of users probably wouldn’t be particularly difficult,” said Will Lyne, NCA Head of Cyber Intelligence.

“Once you become a user, it’s really easy to then … perpetrate criminal activity.”

The NCA said countries involved in the investigation also included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

People can check if they were victims by visiting https://www.politie.nl/checkyourhack.
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New developments:

French President Emmanuel Macron, during visit to Beijing, says with China’s relationship with Russia it can “play a major role” in achieving peace in Ukraine.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi reiterated the “urgent need” to protect the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine as he met with Russian officials in Kaliningrad.
Russian bank VTB reports $7.7 billion in losses for 2022. Bank officials blamed Western sanctions that targeted Russia’s financial sector after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Poland’s Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk announces resignation amid anger from Polish farmers about effects of Ukrainian grain imports on prices.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled Wednesday to neighboring Poland to meet with leaders there as well as members of the public and Ukrainian refugees who fled after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Polish officials said his talks with President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki would include discussion of the conflict as well as international support and cooperation.

Poland has been a key ally for Ukraine. The U.N. refugee agency says there are 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees who have registered for temporary protection status in Poland.

Poland has also served as a main hub for other Ukrainian partners to send in military and humanitarian aid.

U.S. aid

The United States is providing Ukraine with a $2.6 billion military aid package that includes munitions for Patriot air defense systems and three surveillance radars.

The package also includes hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds along with 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds, which Ukrainian forces have continued to quickly burn through as they counter Russia’s illegal invasion.

“Ammunition for HIMARS, for air defense, for artillery is just what we need,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday. “Thank you Mr. President Biden, thank you Congress, thank you every American!”

A senior defense official, who spoke to reporters Tuesday on the condition of anonymity, said new equipment in the package such as nine 30 mm gun trucks could “detect and intercept drones such as the Iranian-built Shahed[s]” that Moscow is currently using in the fight.

About $500 million of the aid package announced Tuesday will provide ammunition and equipment from U.S. military stockpiles using the presidential drawdown authority. Another $2.1 billion will buy an array of munitions and weapons for Ukraine in the future.

The U.S. has now pledged more than $30 billion worth of security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion. When viewed as a percentage of donor country GDP, the U.S. ranks about 10th in its security donations to Kyiv.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron are to land in China on Wednesday seeking to “reset” ties with an important economic partner while broaching thorny issues like Ukraine and trade risks.  

Macron last visited China in 2019. It will be von der Leyen’s first trip since becoming European Commission president that year. 

Since then, China’s strict pandemic controls forced all diplomatic meetings online as relations with Europe soured: first because of a stalled investment pact in 2021 and then Beijing’s refusal to condemn Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. 

For Macron, facing embarrassing pension protests at home, the trip offers a chance to land some economic wins as he travels with a 50-strong business delegation, including Airbus, which is negotiating a big plane order, Alstom and nuclear giant EDF. 

However, some analysts said ostentatious deal-signing would appear opportunistic at a time of heightened frictions between the United States and China.  

“It’s not the time to announce business deals or big new investments,” said Noah Barkin, an analyst with Rhodium Group. “It would essentially be a vote of confidence in the Chinese economy and send the message that France is not on board with the U.S. approach.” 

Von der Leyen has said the EU must reduce risks in ties with Beijing, including limiting Chinese access to sensitive technology and reducing reliance for key inputs such as critical minerals, as well as batteries, solar panels and other clean tech products. 

Macron invited von der Leyen on the trip as a way to project European unity, after French officials criticized German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for going solo to China late last year.  

He has pushed the EU to be more robust in trade relations with China and is broadly supportive of von der Leyen’s stance, Macron advisers said, but the French leader has publicly refrained from using strong anti-China rhetoric, Beijing being prone to bilateral retaliatory measures.  

Beyond trade, both have said they want to persuade China to use its influence over Russia to bring peace in Ukraine, or at least prevent Beijing from directly supporting its ally. 

“Both (Macron and von der Leyen) have not only business in mind but also Ukraine,” said Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “I’m sure it’s not going to be an easy visit.” 

China earlier this year proposed a 12-point peace plan for the Ukraine crisis, which called on both sides to agree to a gradual de-escalation leading to a comprehensive ceasefire. 

But the plan was largely dismissed by the West because of China’s refusal to condemn Russia, and the U.S. and NATO then said China was considering sending arms to Russia, claims which Beijing has denied.  

Suspicions over China’s motives only deepened after President Xi Jinping flew to Moscow for meetings with Vladimir Putin last month in his first overseas visit since securing a precedent-breaking third term as president. 

Macron has said he is also keen to stress to Xi, who he will meet alongside von der Leyen on Thursday, that Europe will not accept China providing arms to Russia. 

“Considering China’s proximity with Russia, it’s obvious it is one of the few countries, if not the only one, which could have a game-changing effect on the conflict, in one way or another,” one of Macron’s advisors said ahead of the trip. 

In a meeting with Xi in Beijing last week, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he had encouraged the Chinese leader to talk to the Ukrainian leadership and learn first-hand about Kyiv’s peace formula. 

Macron and von der Leyen are expected to echo the message that Xi should also talk to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

After brokering a surprise detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia last month, China has been eager to present itself as a global peacemaker and an alternative to the United States, which it says is fanning flames by sending weapons to Ukraine. 

The talks with European leaders come amid high tension with the U.S. over issues ranging from Taiwan to bans on semiconductor exports, and China is eager that Europe does not follow what it sees as a U.S.-led effort to contain its rise.  

Taking aim at von der Leyen’s comments last week on the risks of trade with China, the state-run Chinese nationalist Global Times warned on Monday that Europe would suffer from any attempt to cut economic ties with Beijing. 

“The EU is in a difficult struggle as it is under great pressure from the U.S. to adjust its economic relations with China. China and EU decoupling will only serve U.S. interests, but make both China and Europe suffer,” it said.  

But aside from some hard talk on Ukraine and trade tensions, the trip will also serve up some lighter opportunities to demonstrate what Macron’s advisor said was an attempt to “reset” diplomatic and economic relations with China. 

On Friday, Xi will accompany Macron on a trip to the sprawling southern port of Guangzhou, where the first French ship reached Chinese shores in the 17th century and where France opened its first consulate.  

After meeting students there, Macron will attend a private dinner and tea ceremony with the Chinese leader who also has sentimental attachment to the city as his late father, Xi Zhongxun, used to work there as provincial first secretary. 

“We believe that this (trip) has very large symbolic significance and suggests that (France) is ready to relaunch cooperation with China,” Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Beijing-based think tank. 
…

After a relatively low turnout of 40% in Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections that were held on Sunday, results show there was no outright winner, and the parties are headed to coalition talks.

Analysts say the results could influence Bulgaria’s position on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The two-party coalition of GERB-SDS, led by former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, won the early parliamentary elections with 26.51% of the votes, Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission announced on its website, based on unofficial regional results.

The pro-Western reformist coalition We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria, or PP-DB, is in second place with 25%. Revival, with 14% of the votes, is in third place, ahead of DPS, receiving nearly 14% of voter support. The Bulgarian Socialist Party, an heir to the Bulgarian Communist Party, finished with a historically low 9%.

“The biggest setback was the rise of the Russophile Party to third place, gaining 5 percentage points more than last year,” said Margarita Assenova, an analyst at The Jamestown Foundation. “This will boost Moscow’s influence in Bulgaria and potentially increase calls for a peace settlement of Russia’s war against Ukraine, favoring the Kremlin-desired partition of Ukraine.”

At the same time, both likely winners share pro-European, pro-NATO positions and strong support for Ukraine. During former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov’s government, a secret supply of Bulgarian-made ammunition made its way to Ukraine as early as April 2022, as VOA reported. PP and GERB voted to provide Ukraine with military aid last November.

After casting his ballot, Borissov said a stable government in Bulgaria was the only way out of the crisis.

“With this terrible war in Ukraine, with this redistribution of the world and the entire supply chain, we very clearly have to stand with the democratic world,” The Associated Press reported Borissov as saying. Borissov was first elected as Bulgaria`s prime minister in 2009.

In an earlier interview with VOA, Petkov called on EU leaders to introduce the toughest sanctions against Russia in the early days of the full-force invasion and also emphasized his pro-European position at the polls.

“I voted for a normal European life, to have a normal European government, normal European roads, normal European health care, normal European education,” he said, according to the AP. Petkov led the Bulgarian government formed by a coalition of four parties between December 2021 and August 2022.

Despite their similar political positions, forming a coalition between two political forces is not a given, experts say.

“Too much hostility has accumulated in the last year to the point that it has been the official political strategy to deny any possibility of future cooperation,” Hristo Panchugov, assistant professor at New Bulgarian University, told VOA.

The PP and its ally, Democratic Bulgaria, vowed to never collaborate with GERB and its leader, accusing the party of presiding over rampant corruption during its lengthy rule, Borissov has denied the accusation.

“Even small collaborations on shared policy positions will be extremely difficult. With the local elections coming up in the autumn, the parties will be even more hesitant to enter a partnership that might lead them to lose support,” Panchugov said.

But the strong showing of the Russophile parties in this election, Assenova, said, might force two likely winners to cooperate and form a stable two-party coalition.

“It will be a historic chance for GERB and PP to return the country to its hard-earned place and role within Europe and NATO and to wash its face from shameful pro-Russia rhetoric as Moscow’s brutal genocidal war against independent Ukraine continues,” she said.

Ognyan Minchev, professor of political science at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, points to other forces that push both political forces to form a coalition. The first one comes from regular Bulgarians who are “fed up with the so-called caretaker government of the president, which practically in many important aspects did not govern,” he said.

“Secondly, there is significant pressure from Bulgaria’s partners in the European Union within NATO to create a parliamentary majority and normal functional government, because there are many issues that Bulgaria has to address separately and together with its allies in the context of present-day European and world developments,” Minchev said.

Thirdly, Minchev said both political forces would benefit from joining the government coalition, which would allow GERB to restore its legitimacy after the massive protests in 2020 against corruption in Borissov’s government. It would also help Petkov’s political force maintain its electoral support, which has decreased during the last three election cycles.

If the two leading parties cannot form a coalition, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev will form another caretaker government and schedule another national election. For most of the last two years, except for Petkov’s eight-monthslong government from December 2021 to August 2022, Bulgaria has been ruled by technocratic caretaker governments.

Radev is considered friendly to Russia. Both Panchugov and Assenova point to his opposition to sending military aid to Ukraine.

“He has been exploiting gaps in legislative decisions to limit or reduce support towards Ukraine,” Panchugov said.

“He even disregarded the parliament’s decision to do so. So, we will see another six months of the same, not only regarding the policy towards Ukraine in the war that is going on there, but also in foreign policy, defense policy, rearmament and modernizing of the Bulgarian army,” Assenova said.

She pointed out that the president, whose constitutional role is primarily ceremonial, made most foreign policy and defense decisions during the last two years.

Some information for this report comes from The Associated Press, Reuters and RFE/RL.
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French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrive in China Wednesday for a three-day state visit aimed at discussing trade, human rights, and especially Ukraine with President Xi Jinping, amid ever closer ties between Beijing and Moscow.

The trip will be Macron’s first to China since 2019, and von der Leyen’s first as head of the European Union’s executive arm. Analysts and officials have downplayed expectations for any major outcome, though the two leaders will likely prod China to limit its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“My understanding is it is very much about reengagement,” said Tara Varma, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, who specializes in Indo-Pacific issues.

Macron and von der Leyen are expected to hold talks with President Xi on Thursday. Macron is also scheduled to visit the southern city of Guangzhou.

The trip aims to present a common European front toward China, analysts say, amid growing friction on several fronts. The stakes for improving ties are high for both sides, including China’s position as a top EU trading partner.

In a recent speech that Chinese officials criticized, von der Leyen warned Beijing against directly supporting Moscow in its war on Ukraine and described EU-China relations as “more distant and more difficult.”

Von der Leyen characterized China as becoming “more repressive at home and more assertive abroad.” And she dismissed hopes of resuscitating a stalled investment deal with China, saying it had to be “reassessed” within Europe’s larger China strategy.

Von der Leyen, however, also said the EU did not need to “decouple” from its relations with China.

“That was the hardest hitting and most critical speech that we’ve had on China from a European leader in recent decades,” said Andrew Small, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and author of a recent book on China, titled, “The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future.”

“Although there are elements of this visit that will be about diplomatic reengagement, I think she laid out pretty starkly where the balance of European thinking is really moving,” he added.

Red line?

Macron, who had earlier hoped to visit China at least once a year as president, appears to have greater ambitions for success.

At a minimum, the French presidency reportedly wants China to draw a red line on providing arms to Russia while the war rages in Ukraine.

“Macron also has this hope to secure some form of Chinese support for a peace process, for putting pressure on Russia,” analyst Small said, even as he characterized broader European expectations for that happening as “extremely low.”

Last month, Beijing laid out a 12-point plan to end the war that included calls for a cease-fire, peace talks, and an end to sanctions against Russia. But it did not label Moscow as the aggressor in the war and offered no specifics on its stance toward Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Last week, von der Leyen said any peace plan that consolidated Russian seizures of Ukrainian territory was not viable.

Still, Small said, “there is value in delivering a strong message to the Chinese side that says, ‘The relationship with Europe will be conditioned by how you handle the Ukraine question and your relationship with Russia.’”

Along with Ukraine, Macron and von der Leyen will focus on human rights and economics.

Trade rivalry

Macron is accompanied by a hefty business delegation, composed of CEOs from the energy, transport and aviation sectors. The Reuters news agency reports Macron’s visit coincides with talks on a possible new Chinese order for Airbus planes.

The Europeans have been pressing for a more level playing field when it comes to trade and investment. For its part, China is particularly eager to resurrect an EU investment deal put on hold three years ago, Brookings analyst Varma said.

“I’m pretty sure the Chinese authorities will put the issue to both President von der Leyen and President Macron,” she added. “But there will need to be some guarantees provided by the Chinese authorities in terms of a level playing field, and reciprocity in terms of market access — which is not the case today.”

Ahead of the trip, European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned of the EU’s capacity to inflict economic damage on China as a major market for Chinese goods.

“China is a trade partner, but China is also a systemic rival,” Breton told French radio, “If the (EU) internal market ever closes to China, which I hope will not be the case, that’s four to five GDP points fewer for China.”
…

Analysts say the war in Ukraine has been largely a stalemate in recent months, despite high casualty counts on both sides. But in the city of Chasiv Yar, the war has become deadlier and more dangerous week by week. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports. Videographer: Yan Boechat
…

Britain’s privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty Tuesday for misusing children’s data and violating other protections for users’ personal information.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued a fine of $15.9 million to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people.

It’s the latest example of tighter scrutiny that TikTok and its parent, Chinese technology company ByteDance, are facing in the West, where governments are increasingly concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity.

The British watchdog, which was investigating data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts.

TikTok didn’t adequately identify and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, as required by Britain’s data protection laws, the agency said.

“There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release.

TikTok collected and used personal data of children who were inappropriately given access to the app, he said.

“That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll,” Edwards said.

The company said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.

“We invest heavily to help keep under 13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community,” TikTok said in statement. “We will continue to review the decision and are considering next steps.”

TikTok says it has improved its sign-up system since the breaches happened by no longer allowing users to simply declare they are old enough and looking for other signs that an account is used by someone under 13.

The penalty also covered other breaches of U.K. data privacy law.

The watchdog said TikTok failed to properly inform people about how their data is collected, used and shared in an easily understandable way. Without this information, it’s unlikely that young users would be able “to make informed choices” about whether and how to use TikTok, it said.

TikTok also failed to ensure personal data of British users was processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, the regulator said.

TikTok initially faced a 27 million-pound fine, which was reduced after the company persuaded regulators to drop other charges.

U.S. regulators in 2019 fined TikTok, previously known as Music.aly, $5.7 million in a case that involved similar allegations of unlawful collection of children’s personal information.

Also Tuesday, Australia became the latest country to ban TikTok from its government devices, with authorities from the European Union to the United States concerned that the app could share data with the Chinese government or push pro-Beijing narratives

U.S. lawmakers are also considering forcing a sale or even banning it outright as tensions with China grow.
…

Finland joined the NATO military alliance Tuesday, dealing a major blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a historic realignment of Europe’s post-Cold War security landscape triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Nordic country’s membership doubles Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance. Finland had adopted neutrality after its defeat by the Soviets in World War II, but its leaders signaled they wanted to join NATO just months after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine sent a shiver of fear through its neighbors.

The move is a strategic and political setback for Putin, who has long complained about NATO’s expansion toward Russia and partly used that as a justification for the invasion.

“I’m tempted to say this is maybe the one thing that we can thank Mr. Putin for because he once again here precipitated something he claims to want to prevent by Russia’s aggression, causing many countries to believe that they have to do more to look out for their own defense and to make sure that they can deter possible Russian aggression going forward,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said before accepting the documents that made Finland’s membership official.

The U.S. State Department is the repository of NATO texts concerning membership.

Russia warned it would be forced to take “retaliatory measures” to address what it called security threats created by Finland’s membership. It had also warned it would bolster forces near Finland if NATO sends any additional troops or equipment to what is its 31st member country.

The alliance says it poses no threat to Moscow.

Alarmed by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Finland, which shares a 1,340 kilometer (832 mile) border with Russia, applied to join in May, setting aside years of military nonalignment to seek protection under the organization’s security umbrella.

“It’s a great day for Finland and an important day for NATO, too,” said Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. “Russia tried to create a sphere around them and, well, we are not a sphere. I’m sure that Finns themselves feel more secure, that we are living in a more stable world.”

Neighboring Sweden, which has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years, has also applied. But objections from NATO members Turkey and Hungary have delayed the process.

Niinisto said Finland’s membership “is not complete without that of Sweden. The persistent efforts for a rapid Swedish membership continue.“

Earlier, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Moscow “will be forced to take military-technical and other retaliatory measures to counter the threats to our national security arising from Finland’s accession to NATO.”

It said Finland’s move marks “a fundamental change in the situation in Northern Europe, which had previously been one of the most stable regions in the world.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Finland’s membership reflects the alliance’s anti-Russian course and warned that Moscow will respond depending on what weapons NATO allies place there. But he also sought to play down the impact, noting that Russia has no territorial disputes with Finland.

It’s not clear what additional military resources Russia could send to the Finnish border. Moscow has deployed the bulk of its most capable military units to Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said no more troops would be sent to Finland unless it asked for help.

The country is now protected by what Stoltenberg called NATO’s “iron-clad security guarantee,” under which all member countries vow to come to the defense of any ally that comes under attack.

But Stoltenberg refused to rule out the possibility of holding more military exercises there and said that NATO would not allow Russia’s demands to dictate the organization’s decisions.

“We are constantly assessing our posture, our presence. We have more exercises, we have more presence, also in the Nordic area,” he said.

Finland’s Parliament, meanwhile, said its website was hit with a so-called denial-of-service attack, which made the site hard to use, with many pages not loading and some functions not available.

A pro-Russian hacker group known as NoName057 (16) claimed responsibility, saying the attack was retaliation for Finland joining NATO. The claim could not be immediately verified.

The hacker group, which has reportedly acted on Moscow’s orders, has taken party in a slew of cyberattacks on the U.S. and its allies in the past. Finnish public broadcaster YLE said the same group hit the Parliament’s site last year.

Finland’s entry, marked with a flag-raising ceremony at NATO headquarters, falls on the organization’s very own birthday, the 74th anniversary of the signing of its founding Washington Treaty on April 4, 1949. It also coincides with a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers.
…

At least one person was killed and 30 injured, many seriously, when a passenger train carrying about 50 people derailed in the Netherlands early on Tuesday after hitting construction equipment on the track, Dutch emergency services said. 

Rescue teams were at the scene of the accident at Voorschoten, a village near The Hague, the emergency services said. 

A fire department spokesman told Dutch radio that 19 people were taken to hospital. Others were being treated on the spot, the emergency services said. 

The front carriage of the night train from Leiden city to The Hague derailed and ploughed into a field after the accident, ANP news agency said. The second carriage was on its side and a fire broke out in the rear carriage but was later extinguished, it said.   

There were conflicting reports about the cause of the accident. 

Earlier reports had said the passenger train had collided with a freight train. Dutch Railways (NS) spokesman Erik Kroeze said a freight train was involved in the accident but could not give details. 

Dutch Railways said in a tweet that trains between Leiden and parts of The Hague were cancelled due to the accident. 
…

There are growing concerns among top U.S. military and intelligence officials that Russia’s use of cyberattacks during its war against Ukraine is ushering in a new era of combat in which the line between virtual and real-life battlefields is being erased, along with the notion that any targets will remain off limits.

Instead, top officials are warning that U.S. adversaries are likely to look at Moscow’s efforts to topple Kyiv and conclude that not only do they need to coordinate cyber strikes with conventional, kinetic military tactics, but that a cyberattack may be the best first-strike option.

“The [Russian] operation in Ukraine as it relates to red lines for conflict should be of concern to many people,” a senior defense official told reporters during a briefing to the Defense Writers Group this past Friday.

“If you’re willing to drop a bomb on a power station, or if you’re willing to drop a bomb on a rail network, then you’re certainly willing to execute a cyberattack against them,” the defense official said in response to a question from VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set for the briefing.

“As a just general commonsense sort of military tactic, I don’t believe you would reduce something to rubble if you had the ability to neutralize it otherwise,” the official added. “You don’t want to use high-end kinetic tools unless you have to.”

Russia, though, has been using some of its top-end weaponry, including its Kinzhal hypersonic missile, to take out Ukrainian power plants and other critical infrastructure that have already been targeted by a series of cyberattacks.

“My belief is that had the Russians had the ability to significantly shut down Ukrainian critical infrastructure via cyber, they wouldn’t have wasted kinetic munitions on it,” the senior defense official said.

Despite the apparent failure of Russian cyberattacks to do more damage, Ukrainian officials have warned the pace of such attacks has picked up, and U.S. Cyber Command has warned the Kremlin’s cyber exploits could well “become bolder and look at broader targets.”

China taking notice

U.S. officials also assess that China is learning from Russia’s cyber failures as they prepare for future military confrontation, including potential plans to retake Taiwan.

“I think there’s been a general assessment that what the Russians did in Ukraine was not very well coordinated,” the senior defense official told reporters. “I think the Chinese will look at that, and if the Chinese have a plan to invade Taiwan in 2027, I would expect they have a cyber plan to go along with that. … They will study what happened, and they will try and not make the same mistakes.”

Other U.S. officials have gone as far as to suggest the first indication of a Chinese attack on Taiwan could come in cyberspace.

The first signs of a looming military confrontation in Taiwan “could probably start well below the threshold of a conflict,” Doug Wade, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s China Mission Group, said during a virtual event last month. “It would probably include a wide variety of activities, starting with things like cyber.”

Some analysts studying cyberwarfare agree that Russia’s war against Ukraine has changed the cyber landscape, potentially setting up another test for the effectiveness of cyberattacks with China and Taiwan.

“I think that you could see the first steps in a conflict over Taiwan, for example, to be trying to blind the U.S., in particular, to what China was about to do and then also blind the Taiwanese to what was about to happen, as well,” Emily Harding, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

“I suspect that the cost-benefit analysis will come down on the side of cyberattacks, [which] are a reasonably low cost, reasonably high benefit way to at least confuse your adversary and perhaps undermine their ability to fight. So, it will be tried again,” she said.

Yet there are also those who think it will still take time before Russia, China or another nation is able to effectively use a cyberattack as a first-strike option.

“I think framing it as a first strike is a little bit misleading,” said Jason Blessing, a visiting research fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.

Blessing told VOA that while there is ample evidence that an increase in cyberactivity could be an indication of a looming physical attack, cyberattacks have yet to show they are capable of doing more than paving the way for conventional military operations.

“The drawback to using cyber operations, though, is it requires intense time and resources to plan something like that,” he said. “Cyber operations are almost always going to be complementary to the broader strategic goals and broader conventional aims. … It’s not that it’s going to replace launching a missile or driving a tank into some territory.”
…

As bloody, stalemated battles in Ukraine grind on, young dancers in the eastern city of Izium are training again, hoping to resume competition despite the destruction of their theater. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Izium, Ukraine. Camera: Yan Boechat.
…

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday urged Russia’s foreign minister to release Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist detained last week on accusations of espionage.  

Blinken “conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention” of an American journalist, according to a State Department statement that did not directly name Gershkovich. 

During the call, Blinken called for Russia to ensure the immediate release of the journalist and of former Marine Paul Whelan, who is also detained on espionage charges in Russia, the statement added. 

A U.S. official, speaking to the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity, said that although the statement did not name Gershkovich, he is the journalist referred to.

Under U.S. law, the State Department is generally barred from speaking about an American citizen unless that person has signed a privacy waiver.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that during the call Lavrov told Blinken that Washington should not politicize the arrest and said that a court would determine Gershkovich’s fate, according to Reuters.

The minister repeated claims made by other Russian officials last week that the journalist was caught “red handed” but did not provide evidence to back up that claim.

Sunday’s call was a rare moment of direct contact between Blinken and Lavrov, who have not had regular communication since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was detained Wednesday in Yekaterinburg, a city about 800 miles from the Russian capital. 

A Moscow court on Friday ordered Gershkovich to be held in pre-trial detention until May 29. He is being held at Lefortovo prison in Moscow. 

Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker has denied the allegations against Gershkovich. She said in an interview with CBS that she is reassured that Blinken and Lavrov spoke.

In a message to Journal staff on Friday, Tucker described Russia’s actions as “completely unjustified.” 

“[Gershkovich] is a member of the free press who right up until he was arrested was engaged in newsgathering. Any suggestions otherwise are false,” Tucker said in a message shared by the Journal’s communications department. 

On board Air Force One on Monday, principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters that the U.S. is seeking the journalist’s immediate release, adding, “these charges are ridiculous, and we want to see consular access to evidence as soon as possible.” 

The National Press Club in Washington has described Blinken’s call with Lavrov as “encouraging” but noted that the charges Russia has brought against Gershkovich “could not be of a more serious nature.”

A statement by the club’s president Eileen O’Reilly and Gil Klein, who leads the National Press Club Journalism Institute, said that Gershkovich has been denied access to the lawyer provided to him by the Journal.

“Not since the days of the Cold War has Russia taken a U.S. journalist hostage. For nearly 40 years, despite the ebbs and flows of tensions between our countries, our journalists have been able to operate without being arrested and imprisoned. Now that has changed,” the National Press Club statement said.

The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has reported that Gershkovich’s lawyer was denied access to the hearing and that journalists were turned away from the court.

Some analysts have questioned whether the arrest is an attempt by Russia to gain leverage.

Several U.S. citizens are in detention in Russia, and both Washington and Moscow have accused the other of carrying out politically motivated arrests, Agence France-Presse reported.

In December 2022, Russia released from prison U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner had been serving a nine-year sentence on drug charges after being detained in Russia in February 2022.

Journal reporter Gershkovich has been working for the media company for just over a year, covering Russia and Ukraine.

His recent stories include coverage of economic problems in Russia, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, and the Russian jets that collided with a U.S. drone over the Black Sea.

The Journal, which has a paywall for its news website, has made Gershkovich’s stories publicly accessible since his arrest.

Before joining the Journal, Gershkovich worked in Moscow for AFP and spent three years as a reporter for The Moscow Times. He also was a news assistant at The New York Times.

On the same day that Blinken and Lavrov spoke, an explosion at a St. Petersburg café killed a military blogger who had strongly advocated for the war.

The explosion killed Vladlen Tatarsky, who is also known as Maxim Fomin, and injured about 30 others.

Tatarsky had been speaking at an event organized by a group named the Cyber Z Front — a reference to the letter “Z” that Russia adopted as a symbol of the war.

The 40-year-old Russian was among a group who have called on Moscow to take a more aggressive stance in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Russian authorities detained a St. Petersburg woman, Darya Trepova, in connection with the attack. 

VOA’s Carolyn Presutti contributed to this report.
…

French authorities see the police as protectors who are ensuring that citizens can peacefully protest President Emmanuel Macron’s contentious retirement age increase. But to human rights advocates and demonstrators who were clubbed or tear-gassed, officers have overstepped their mission.

In the months since mass protests of the proposed pension changes began roiling France, some law enforcement officers have been accused of resorting to gratuitous violence. A man in Paris lost a testicle to an officer’s club, and a police grenade took the thumb of a woman in Rouen. A railroad worker hit by grenade fragments lost an eye.

“Where is your humanity?” a woman shouted at officers who knocked an apparently homeless man to the ground in Paris, kicked him and used vulgar language while ordering him to get up and go. In a video posted on Twitter, another passerby helped the man to his feet at the scene last month near the Place de la Bastille.

The violence adds to the anger in the streets and complicates efforts to invite dialogue between the government and labor unions, who are planning an 11th round of mass demonstrations Thursday.

The protests, which began in January, gained momentum after Macron’s decision last month to push a bill to raise the retirement age through the lower house of parliament without a vote. The common French reference to law enforcement officers as “forces of order” has been turned on its head. Now the question is whether police represent force or order.

Jarred by the bad publicity, authorities have shifted to damage control by offering accolades for security forces.

“There is no police violence,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Wednesday on RTL radio while condemning “individual acts” of officers who use disproportionate force. “Can’t we occasionally thank the forces of order?” he pleaded.

The concerns about police brutality have reverberated beyond France. Amnesty International, the International Federation of Human Rights and the Council of Europe — the continent’s main human rights body — were among the organizations that cited excessive police violence during what has been a largely peaceful protest movement.

French police are sent into demonstrations with weapons that are prohibited in most European countries, including stun grenades and rubber bullets, according to Sebastian Roche, an expert on security forces with France’s National Center for Scientific Research.

Demonstrations and potentially mutilating weapons are a combustible combination, Roche said, because “the temptation will be very big to use these armaments” especially when police come under a cascade of objects hurled at them, including Molotov cocktails.

The strategy is “at once very violent” and in some aspects illegal, Roche said, citing cases in which demonstrators were detained en masse and then released without charges the next morning. Lawyers’ and magistrates’ associations have said such practices are an abuse of the law.

Jonas Cardoso, a 20-year-old student, was among more than 100 people detained during a March 23 protest in Paris.

“I spent hours in a cell for four people with nine other protesters. I slept on the floor,” he told The Associated Press. Cardoso denied any wrongdoing and was released without charges.

Worse, Cardoso said, is that violence may beget more violence.

“If the government doesn’t listen to us, the violence will rise. Our worst fear is that someone will die while protesting,” the young man said.

Videos of police brutality posted on social media largely fail to capture the presence of black-clad ultra-leftists or anarchists who have infiltrated the protest marches, destroyed property and attacked police officers.

“There are troublemakers, often extreme left, who want to take down the state and kill police and ultimately take over the institutions,” Darmanin said after a protest in March that turned especially violent.

The ranks of these provocateurs have grown, bolstered by opportunists and some leftist students. The intruders work in small, highly mobile groups, appearing and disappearing in formations known as black blocs.

Black blocs are not a new phenomenon, but they represent a danger to police. In one dramatic video posted on social networks, an officer is seen crashing to the ground after being hit with a paving stone. Colleagues dragged him away.

Violence by and against police is not limited to Paris, or to protests over Macron’s retirement plan.

Gendarmes and militants opposed to an artificial water basin recently clashed in rural France. Four people — two gendarmes and two protesters — were hospitalized in serious condition.

According to French policing rules, the use of force “must be absolutely necessary, strictly proportionate and graduated.”

“Of course, the police response is proportionate,” Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez insisted in a television interview. Police intervene only when black blocs move into action, he said.

“Without police, demonstrations wouldn’t take place,” he said, insisting on their role as guardians of peace.

However, some protesters have found themselves trapped by police tactics such as encirclement, in which officers surround marchers so police can chase down troublemakers. But protesters stuck inside the police bubble can’t escape tear gas fumes.

Roche said the latest tensions show that France has “an accumulation of [police] crises that no other European country has.”

He cited the 2018-2019 Yellow Vest protests for social and economic justice where a brutal police response left two people dead, and multiple protesters lost eyes. Next came a debacle during last year’s Champions League Cup final when British soccer fans were gassed by police at the Stade de France.

Amnesty International’s France chief, Jean-Claude Samouiller, said last week at a news conference that France should improve its policing strategy and cited “a doctrine of de-escalation and dialogue” that is observed in Germany, Belgium and Sweden.

Compared with other European countries, Samouiller said, the two protest deaths in France in recent years put the nation at the bottom of the class, in the category of “bad student.”
…

Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a bomb attack in a St Petersburg cafe on Sunday in which some 30 other people were wounded. Here’s what we know so far.   

Who was Tatarsky? 

Tatarsky – real name Maxim Fomin – was among the best-known members of an influential group of military bloggers who have provided a running commentary on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Although frequently scathing about the defense establishment, they have been enthusiastic cheerleaders for the war and avoided direct criticism of President Vladimir Putin. Tatarsky, 40, was among those who publicly demanded that Russia pursue the war even more aggressively. For example, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Kherson after Russia retreated from the city last November, Tatarsky demanded to know why Moscow had not taken the chance to assassinate him with a drone.   

What happened in the café? 

Tatarsky was giving a talk to an audience of about 100 people on Sunday evening at an event organized by a group called “Cyber Z Front”, whose name refers to the letter ‘Z’ that Russia has adopted as a symbol of the war. According to Russian news outlets, the explosion took place several minutes after a woman calling herself Nastya presented Tatarsky with a bust that she said she had made of him.   

Who is the suspect? 

Russia’s state Investigative Committee said on Monday that Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old woman from St Petersburg, had been arrested. The interior ministry earlier placed her on its wanted list but gave no further information about her.   

What could have been the motive? 

Tatarsky was the second high-profile war propagandist to be assassinated in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The first was Darya Dugina, the journalist daughter of a prominent ultra-nationalist figure, who was killed by a car bomb near Moscow last August. The killing is an attack on the hardline pro-war camp in Russia, and sends a warning to other members of this group that they could be targeted anywhere. Tatarsky had survived extensive reporting trips on the war’s front lines but was killed hundreds of miles away, in the heart of Russia’s second city. 

Tatarsky also had ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting for Russia in Ukraine and the former owner of the cafe. Prigozhin is a highly divisive figure who has frequently argued with the defense establishment, accusing it at times of starving his men of ammunition and denying them credit for advances.   

Who could have been behind the attack? 

No one has produced clear evidence, but some Russians have pointed the finger at Ukraine. Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is occupied by Russia, said: “The Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime. It needs to be destroyed, there’s no other way to stop it.” Prigozhin, however, said he would not blame Kyiv. Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, wrote on Twitter that it had only been a matter of time – “like the bursting of a ripe abscess” – before Russia became consumed by what he called domestic terrorism. 
…

New developments:

In Kostiantynivka, eastern Ukraine, six civilians were killed and eight wounded from Russian shelling Sunday morning, a senior Ukraine official said, according to Reuters.
A top Ukrainian official outlined the plan Kyiv would take after the country reclaims control of Crimea, including dismantling the bridge that links the peninsula to Russia, The Associated Press reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia assuming leadership of the United Nations Security Council on Sunday an absurd and destructive move, Reuters reported.
An explosion at a cafe in Russia’s second-largest city killed a military blogger who had supported the fighting in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke by telephone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Sunday, the U.S. State Department said. 

Blinken called for the immediate release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom Russia has accused of spying. A statement by U.S. State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel did not mention the journalist by name. 

Responding to Blinken, Lavrov said that Gershkovich’s fate will be determined by a Russian court and told Blinken it was unacceptable for Washington to politicize the case. Lavrov said the journalist was caught “red-handed,” though Russia has yet to present any evidence.

The statement said Blinken also sought the release of U.S. citizen Paul Whelan, who has been detained for 1,553 days after being sentenced to a 16-year sentence at a Russian penal colony after being convicted of espionage.

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who was freed from a Russian penal colony in a prisoner exchange last year, has urged the Biden administration to keep using “every tool possible” to secure the release of the U.S. reporter.

The Kremlin asserts Gershkovich was using journalism as a cover for spying, something the newspaper has vehemently denied. The Wall Street Journal has demanded the immediate release of Gershkovich, calling his arrest Thursday “a vicious affront to a free press,” while The New York Times published a statement from a coalition of news organizations expressing deep concern about Gershkovich’s detention.

Russian troop deaths

A number of Russia’s troop deaths in Ukraine have come from noncombat injuries, such as alcoholism and improper training, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday.  

A “significant minority” of the roughly 200,000 casualties Russia has suffered since invading Ukraine were due to noncombat causes, such as alcohol consumption, road traffic accidents and “climatic injuries, such as hypothermia, the British defense ministry said Sunday in its latest intelligence update.

“Russian commanders likely identify pervasive alcohol abuse as particularly detrimental to combat effectiveness,” the update said. “However, with heavy drinking pervasive across much of Russian society, it has long been seen as a tacitly accepted part of military life, even on combat operations.”

Spring counteroffensive

Meanwhile, ahead of a planned spring counteroffensive by Ukraine’s military, a senior Ukraine official outlined a plan Kyiv would take after the country reclaims control of Crimea.

On Sunday, Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council secretary, said among the steps would be dismantling the strategic bridge that links the seized Black Sea peninsula to Russia. 

Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but most nations do not recognize the peninsula as Russian territory. 

As a condition for peace, Moscow has demanded that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and acknowledge other land gains made by Russia since fighting began more than a year ago. Kyiv has ruled out any peace talks with Moscow until Russian troops leave all occupied territories, including Crimea.

More aid

A new $2.6 billion U.S. military aid package that could include air surveillance radars, anti-tank rockets and fuel trucks for Ukraine’s fight against Russia is expected to be announced as soon as Monday, U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Friday.

A half-dozen types of munitions, including tank munitions, are also expected to be on the list of equipment that could be finalized this weekend. The officials added that the dollar amount and specific equipment in the package could change.

Also slated for inclusion were precision aerial munitions, bridging equipment Ukraine would use to assault Russian positions, recovery vehicles to help disabled heavy equipment such as tanks, and additional rounds for NASAMS air defenses that the U.S. and allies have given to Kyiv.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed by a bomb blast in a St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday in what appeared to be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely associated with the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s state Investigative Committee said 19 other people were wounded in the blast, and it had opened a murder investigation.

Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the influential military bloggers who have championed Russia’s war effort in Ukraine while often criticizing the failures of the army top brass.

“We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be as we like it,” he was shown saying in a video clip last September at a Kremlin ceremony where President Vladimir Putin claimed four occupied regions of Ukraine as Russian territory – a move rejected as illegal by most countries.

There was no indication as to who was behind the blast.

TASS news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying the improvised explosive device was hidden in a miniature statue that was handed to Tatarsky as he addressed a group of people in the cafe.

Mash, a Telegram channel with links to Russian law enforcement, posted a video that appeared to show Tatarsky, microphone in hand, being presented with a statuette of a helmeted soldier. It said the explosion happened minutes later.

Tatarsky’s death followed the killing last August of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultra-nationalist, in a car bomb attack near Moscow.

Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret services of carrying out that attack, which Putin called “evil.” Ukraine denied involvement.

Russia’s war bloggers, an assortment of military correspondents and freelance commentators with army backgrounds, have enjoyed broad freedom from the Kremlin to publish hard-hitting views on the war, now in its 14th month. Putin even made one of them a member of his human rights council last year.

They reacted with shock to the news of Tatarsky’s death.

“He was in the hottest spots of the special military operation and he always came out alive. But the war found him in a Petersburg cafe,” said Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the name War Gonzo.

Alexander Khodakovsky, a leading pro-Moscow figure in eastern Ukraine, wrote: “Max, if you were a nobody, you’d have died of ‘vodka and headcolds.’ But you were dangerous to them, you did your business like no one else could. We will pray for you, brother.”
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Finns cast ballots on Sunday in a closely contested parliamentary election that could cost left-wing Prime Minister Sanna Marin power amid voter concern over the future of generous public services at a time of economic downturn.

No party is seen as holding a decisive lead and the election is likely to be followed by lengthy coalition talks, although whichever party wins on Sunday will have the first attempt at forming a government.

Voting began at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) and closes at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT). Partial results from early voting will be published shortly afterwards.

Marin, 37, is seen by fans around the world as a millennial role model for progressive new leaders and remains very popular among many Finns, particularly young moderates, but she has antagonized some conservatives with lavish spending on pensions and education that they see as irresponsible.

“She [Marin] has been like a rock star, but she has been very nervous,” said retired graduate engineer Matti Valonen referring to Marin’s performances in debates leading up to the election.

Opinion polls show Marin’s Social Democrats, the biggest party in the outgoing coalition government, in a dead heat with the rightist National Coalition Party and the nationalist Finns Party, with all three seen winning some 18.7-19.8% of ballots and so reliant on other smaller parties to form a government.

The National Coalition has led in polls for almost two years although its lead has melted away in recent months. It has promised to curb spending and stop the rise of public debt, which has reached just over 70% of GDP since Marin took office in 2019.

The grouping accuses Marin of eroding Finland’s economic resilience at a time when Europe’s energy crisis, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine, has hit the country hard and the cost of living has increased.

The Finns Party, too, calls for austerity but its main goal is to reduce what its leader Riikka Purra has called “harmful” immigration from developing countries outside the European Union.
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